This article is on the same lines as the latter one, but it specifically focuses on an important part of reporting and presentation for patent and research landscape studies - mind maps.

What are mind maps?

Mind maps are a visual way of communicating the logic you used to cluster your patent (as well as research paper) results in your presentation.

Why are mind maps important?

When you cluster references (patents and research papers), your clustering logic should be crystal clear for you to actually get some insights out of your hard work.
Something like this - If a patent discloses x feature, tag it under the x column, if it discloses y feature, tag it under y column.
This logic needs to be uniform, for you to get meaningful insights out of your patent research, and it also needs to be presented with your results. This is where mind maps come handy.

There are many programs that let you prepare mind maps - both paid as well as open source (read free). MindManager from Mindjet and XMind are two well-known examples of mind mapping tools that you can use to create mind maps for your patent landscape studies.

What's new?

Apart from these two, you should also try out these super awesome collaborative online mind mapping tools. Their benefit is that they are online, you do not need to install a program.

Many of them come with a free trial or a basic version that you can use, and some of them also offer an option wherein multiple team members can collaborate on creating a mind map. Check them out!